


Lead Us On A Merry Chase

by PanBoleyn



Series: Three Is More Than Just Company [5]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-29
Updated: 2010-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment between Eames and Ariadne makes Arthur misconstrue his place in their triad, and he takes off. The other two aren't having any of that, however.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lead Us On A Merry Chase

Who I am  
From the start  
Take me home  
To my heart  
Let me go and I will run  
I will not be silent  
All this time spent in vain  
Wasted years, wasted gain  
All is lost, hope remains  
But this war's not over  
There's a light, there's a sun  
Taking all shattered ones  
To the place we belong... – Shattered, Trading Yesterday

Arthur taps his fingertips on the desk, reading over the e-mail from Reynolds. The other man is an architect, one Arthur's worked with once or twice before. Apparently, Reynolds needs a point man – but just a point man. He has an extractor and the job's simple, no forger required. So this job offer is just for Arthur.

It's hardly the first time he's taken a job alone. Even when he was Cobb's partner, he would occasionally sign on to work with other people. But now... He really doesn't want to. The fact that Eames and Ariadne have such a pull on him, that he doesn't want to be away from them even for a few weeks – though thanks to dream-time dilation, it will probably end up feeling longer for him – is worrying. He knew it would happen, it's why he's so sure this... thing they have isn't a good idea.

Well, it's one of the reasons. He really doesn't want to think about the primary one, the one he's bracing himself for even though he doesn't think about it. It's not as though he needs to, it's inevitable and he knows that. But it hasn't happened yet, so for now he pushes it aside and stands up. He has to tell them about this offer, because he just might take it – get off on his own for a little while, clear his head – and they should know that their point man could be out of reach for a little while. He certainly wouldn't blame them for being out-of-sorts about that. But he doesn't even consider that they might object to their lover taking off without them. It just doesn't cross his mind.

He hears them before he sees them, laughing in the kitchen. Ariadne's finally gotten Eames to make good on his promise to give her cooking lessons. They have a system right now; Eames usually cooks, though Ariadne will occasionally step in with the few things she knows how to make, and Arthur touches nothing but the coffeepot and the microwave. But Ariadne still wants to learn, so Eames is teaching her.

Despite his ban from being in the kitchen, Arthur's sure that the offer from Reynolds gives him a good excuse, and if he's being honest with himself, he's glad of it. It sounds like they're having fun in there. Which they are, he finds when he sees them. He watches them flick water at each other for a few minutes, so absorbed in their war that they don't even see him there. Apparently the cooking lesson has been put on hold and he opens his mouth to comment on that.

But just then, Eames grabs Ariadne's wrist to stop her latest attack, and he uses his grip to draw her in a little. They both stop dead, and what's in their eyes as they look at each other, all the laughter gone, makes Arthur's throat close. He turns away before they see him, before...

Back in the office, he attempts to finish going through his inbox, but all he can see is the way Eames and Ariadne were looking at each other out there. He doesn't think he's ever seen those expressions on their faces, not directed at each other and certainly not at him. But Arthur can still figure out what it means. They love each other. And in that one moment, which he wasn't supposed to see, they weren't bothering to hide it.

And they would only be hiding it because of him. Because they don't want him to know that, really, he's intruding. Even if they don't think so yet, Arthur knows now that it's the truth. And this, this is why he hadn't wanted to say yes to them, because honestly he's always known it would end this way. How could it not? Eames and Ariadne are both passionate, creative, vibrant. And Arthur's... Well. He's not like them at all. So it was always going to come to this.

It's just... He'd actually let himself begin to hope, for the first time in so damn long. He'd started to let himself relax, to think that maybe he's finally found a place to belong. A thought he'd been so sure he'd outgrown, until this had all started. So he has no one to blame but himself for the way he feels right now, like a metal band is tightening around his chest, making it all but impossible to breathe. He knows better, he learned years ago that people don't keep him, don't want him there permanently. What has he been thinking, these past few months? How could he let his guard down like this?

He gives up on trying to read the computer screen and just sits there, closing his eyes. It doesn't matter how he let it happen; it's happened. Now... Now he has to cope with it.

The Reynolds job is open. He'll have a chance to regroup, to come up with some plausible reason to cut his ties with Eames and Ariadne. Or... Maybe it's better to do it now. Clean break. It's neater than letting them think he'll be back.

Decision made, he pleads off when Eames and Ariadne say they've decided that eating out is a good idea. He's not feeling well, he says, despising himself for the pathetic, little kid lie. He's shocked when they actually buy it – though since he's still finding it hard to breathe, maybe it's not entirely a lie. It almost backfires when they hesitate and Ariadne asks outright if he wants them to stay. But he laughs it off and they go out after all.

Arthur doesn't waste time. He packs his things – not as much as you might expect but more than he'd realized – and shoots off an e-mail to Reynolds. The last thing he does is write a note and leave it on the nightstand. It would make a mess of things if he just vanished and a bigger mess if he tried to end this in person, so a note is a reasonable compromise, even if he feels it's a coward's way out. This whole thing is, so what does it matter?

He's not even gone ten minutes when they get back.

~ ~ ~

Arthur doesn't get sick. Or rather, even when he is sick he ignores it, as though he can heal himself by sheer force of will. Eames has never known him to use illness as an excuse to avoid anything. Work, sure, that's Arthur's favorite excuse for everything, but not feeling ill. Something's off. He doesn't know what, but he is certain that something is very wrong.

“How does takeaway sound?” he asks.

“I was just thinking that,” Ariadne agrees. “Was it just me, or was Arthur acting really weird?”

“No, love, something's up. Don't know what, but I imagine we can get it out of him.”

They stop for Chines – Szechuan chicken for Eames, pork lo mein for Ariadne, and they know Arthur always gets beef with snow peas, so they get an order of that too. It's automatic by now, ordering for all three of them.

But they get back to the apartment and all the lights are out. Ariadne doesn't say anything, just walks to the bedroom. “Arthur?”

There's no answer except for a note on the nightstand. Ariadne doesn't move immediately, but then she's rushing forward to pick up the note and read it, hoping it's not what she thinks it is. She has a crazy urge to laugh at the neat creases and even edges because that's so... so... Arthur. But the note itself makes her forget that in an instant.

“Sean?” And it's a mark of how shocked she is that she uses Eames' first name. She doesn't even... How could Arthur...?

Eames has already noticed a few small things missing that are Arthur's, that denote the point man's presence. So he's not surprised to see the note in Ariadne's hand – or rather, he's surprised that Arthur bothered to leave a note at all. In Guadalajara he'd simply vanished.

But then he reads the note and understands Ariadne's shock. He's expecting a curt explanation that things are getting too intense, because it's Eames' experience that Arthur cuts and runs when things start getting important. This, on the other hand... This is making him question if he'd ever read Arthur right at all.

I'm sorry to leave so abruptly, but I've got a job lined up. I don't think we should work together anymore and I apologize for any professional inconvenience this causes you. On a personal level, this is for the best, though I'm sure you don't agree just now. You're very well-suited to each other; I'm only complicating things. Really, I'm doing you a favor.  
– Arthur

“Bloody fucking hell.”

Ariadne nods grimly. “I don't know what he's thinking. 'Only complicating things'? How can he think that?” She's bewildered and above all, hurt. Eames, on the other hand, feels like certain missing things about Arthur are slotting into place. The way he always seems surprised and a little suspicious of honest affection, or how completely floored he was in Philadelphia.

He thought Arthur ran away because he didn't want anything to be serious, because he had assumed that to be the case back in Mexico as well. But this... Arthur seems to think that he's not as important to them as they are to each other, and that's why he's gone. It doesn't fit Eames' theory of a man who is trying to avoid anything serious. He doesn't know what to make of that, and it doesn't matter right now anyway. What matters is finding Arthur.

“I'm not sure how he could think that, Ari,” he says in response to her question. “But we'll have to change his mind.”

“How? We don't know where he went.”

“Well, you do that little trick with e-mails that Arthur showed you, and I'll run down Arthur's aliases. I know most of them.”

He's just found Arthur – or rather, Mark Cohen, technically speaking – on a flight to Miami when Ariadne says, “Do you know an architect named Reynolds?”

There's a sinking feeling in the pit of Eames' stomach. Reynolds is an idiot who has already gotten two team members killed in recent years, and several more injured. Arthur knows better than to work with him, doesn't he? “I know him. Tell me Arthur said no to whatever he wanted.”

“No, he told him yes. Why?”

“Well, I was going to say pack a bag for Miami, but now I'm thinking forget the bags.”

~ ~ ~

In hindsight, Arthur probably should have known that taking Reynolds' offer wasn't one of his brighter ideas. They haven't even started the job properly and the people Reynolds pissed off from his last job are after them. Arthur would wonder how Reynolds is still alive when he's this sloppy, except he's reasonably sure the architect no longer is. Their chemist is certainly dead, and Arthur thinks the extractor got away.

Arthur himself has a bullet graze on his upper left arm. It's painful, but not serious. He won't even bleed out from it – he's not sure he could but he'll either have time to bandage it or he'll be dead long before the almost-scratch makes him lose that much blood. So he just has to ignore the jolt of pain when he fires back at the shooters.

He ducks back behind the corner, leaning heavily against the wall. Checking his clip, he realizes that he only has three bullets left. Fuck. He can't take out all of them – there are six – which leaves him pretty much screwed.

It doesn't surprise him that Ariadne and Eames' faces flash through his mind. He imagines they won't react well when they hear – assuming that they do. Sometimes people just vanish in this business, after all. He should have explained himself in person rather than leaving a stupid note. He should have...

There are cries of surprise from where his attackers are, and Arthur peers cautiously around, just in time to see one of the shooters drop, a bullet wound in the back of his skull. From here he can't see whoever it was that did that – has the extractor come back? It doesn't matter, he decides, firing off a shot of his own. Between them, he and the newcomer make short work of the assassins, and the ease with which it was done should have clued Arthur in. But it doesn't, resulting in him freezing with shock when he sees Eames. He blinks once, twice, then finds his voice. “Not that I'm grateful for the save, but what are you doing here?”

“We need to talk about that note of yours.”

Arthur tenses, but he's not surprised. “I'd really rather not.”

There's anger in Eames' eyes, but something else too. “Yes, well, I wasn't exactly thinking you'd have a choice in the matter, darling.”

Arthur could probably do something stupid right about now, like run the other way, and part of him wants to. But just a few minutes ago, he'd been wishing that he'd explained in person why he was leaving. And there's that small, treacherous part of him that notes, as Eames leads him outside – because apparently he can't be trusted to follow the Brit out, though admittedly that makes sense – that Ariadne's here too. They chased after him. It probably doesn't mean what he secretly hopes it does, but...

“Are you all right?” Ariadne asks him, eyes worried. He nods and she shifts gears, shooting him a death glare he's pretty sure she actually learned from him and whacking him over the head. (That, he's not sure where she learned.) “Good. That means I can yell at you. How could you leave us like this? Don't you care at all?”

Entirely too much. That's the problem. “I... That's not why... You two don't need me, I don't want to be in the way.” She looks like he's slapped her, and Arthur hates himself.

“How could you think that? What did we do to give you that idea?” Arthur can't answer, because the only concrete example he has is that one scene in the kitchen. And now that he thinks about it, it seems illogical. How can he explain the feeling he got, that feeling that they didn't need him, that they'd forget him if he vanished, just like everyone else?

He doesn't know how to say what he's thinking, and Eames doesn't give him a chance to. “I'm not sure we did anything, Ari,” Arthur here just doesn't trust us. Do you, Arthur? I mean, after everything, you're still expecting us to throw you over.” Eames' voice holds more anger than Ariadne's does. But he has a right to it, technically – this is the second time Arthur's vanished on him, after all. And behind it is more of the same hurt, which only makes Arthur feel even worse.

“Sean, don't – ” Ariadne begins, trying to take on the peacemaker role. It's what happens when two of them fight; whoever's not angry tries to step in and calm things down. But Eames isn't having any of it.

“No, Ariadne. I'm sick of this. This is the second time he's pulled a stunt like this on me.” Turning to Arthur, he fixes the point man with a hard glare. “I don't speak Hebrew,” he says evenly. “But I know people who do. And what you said that last night, in Guadalajara, I remembered it and I asked someone. Who the fuck tells someone they love them and then runs away? Twice now that you've done it to Ari and me both? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Oh God, he hadn't even thought Eames was awake that night, over a year before the Fischer job. He hadn't been able to bite back the words like he had half a dozen times before. So he'd been careful, said them in Hebrew – his mother had taught him the language, not so much for religious reasons as because his father didn't speak it, and it was a way to hide things from him – but apparently not careful enough. “I leave before people can leave me,” he says, not meaning to but once again not able to stop himself. “Everyone always leaves, why should the two of you be any different?” The words are wrenched from him, and he hates how young and lost he sounds. He doesn't sound like a thirty-year-old, he sounds like the boy he used to be, the boy who for whatever reason nobody wanted to keep once his mother was gone.

Ariadne touches his arm and he jerks, surprised at the touch. “Arthur, what are you talking about?”

Now he's started, he can't seem to shut the hell up. What is wrong with him? “Ten years,” he says. “Ten years, seven different families. You know, they say that they give a damn, and then they don't anymore. I was too quiet, too edgy, too something. And you two... God, you don't even see it, how perfect you two are together. You don't need me, and one of these days you'll get tired of me like everyone else does. I just thought it would be easier to end all this before it gets hard on all of us.”

They both stare at him, stunned into silence. And because he knows it's for the best, he backs away a little, starting to turn away so he can leave. But he doesn't get the chance, not when Eames grabs his wrist and yanks him back, pinning him against the rental car. Ariadne's beside them in an instant, her face as surprised as Arthur feels. But he doesn't get much chance to look at her, not when Eames' hand is under his chin, making him meet the forger's blazing eyes.

“Don't ever talk about yourself like that again,” Eames hisses, still angry but it's... Arthur's not sure what's different about it, but it's not like before. Eames doesn't seem angry at him anymore, not really. “Goddamn it, have you really been expecting us to walk, all this time? You really think we don't need you? When Ari got into your e-mail and saw you were with Reynolds... Do you know what that was like, knowing you were working with the sort of idiot who gets his team members killed?”

Arthur shakes his head, still confused and thinking silence is probably best right now. “Arthur,” Ariadne says his name with a shaking voice, and Eames lets the point man's chin go so he can look at her. She looks more sad than angry, her eyes filled with sincerity as she looks him in the eye. “We love you. Don't you believe that?”

“I'd like to. I love you both... more than I thought I... But why would you love me? I don't match up with you two, it doesn't make any sense.”

Eames shook him, and Arthur looked back his way, to see that Eames looked as hurt as Ariadne did now. “Why? There's no... We love you because of you, all this shit about you being different is ridiculous, Arthur! It doesn't matter!”

“That's why we love you,” Ariadne said quietly, in his ear. “Because of whatever it is that you think should make us lose interest in you. That's why we need you. We're all like that, we balance each other out. It's why we fit. It wouldn't be... It's not right without you, Arthur, don't you know that?”

It's strange, really. He probably wouldn't believe them, except... It's in how they're looking at him, a weight to their gazes that he hasn't ever seen before. Ariadne's almost pleading with him, and Eames is trying to make him believe them, it's so like them both. He's wanted to believe them, wanted to for so long and been afraid to. Because it never ends well. But...

“Please, just trust us. Please.” Ariadne again, and she really is pleading this time. Arthur can't look at either of them, so he closes his eyes. He's never heard it quite like this before. “Oh, I'm sure you'll be happy here.” “You'll be able to stay with us as long as you like.” “Don't worry, this one will work out.” Every time there was somewhere new there was some variant on it. But it was never so real. Not like this, not like now.

He opens his eyes, looks at Eames and then at Ariadne. Taking a deep breath, he remembers a conversation from several weeks back and thinks he knows what to say. “You asked, before, what my last name was. I didn't tell you because I... I kept holding things back. I had reasons; mostly what I told you about growing up, but... I've been afraid to trust you, because I was so sure it was going to end badly. I'm still not sure it won't – it'll be a while, I think, before I can be. But... If you still want to know, I'm Arthur Levine. And I do love you both, that's not ever been the issue. I just don't want to lose you, and I thought it would hurt less if I left before you did.”

“Well, Arthur Levine, we're not going anywhere,” Eames says flatly.

“You're stuck with us, so I really hope you're all right with that,” Ariadne tells him, trying to be a little lighthearted about it, to calm them all down. Arthur offers them a faint smile. He's still not entirely sure it will work out, but it occurs to him that no one can ever be sure about that kind of thing. And if anything – anyone – is worth a shot, Ariadne and Eames are.

“Can I hold you to that?” he says finally.

It's just a hug, the both of them practically squashing him. But it's OK if he can't breathe for a second, because that's really not relevant. What is relevant is that he loves them, and he's finally, finally sure that if nothing else, they love him as much as they love each other. He doesn't really know anything else, but he's starting to think that's enough to be going on with.


End file.
